I write often in this blog about the belonging that can occur in participative leadership and in well-held containers of encounter and learning. Including earlier this week, musings on temporary coherence. I write often in this blog about discovering light together (as was the case in a recent walk with friends in the photo above).
Much of the search for any of us supporting and creating change is about finding the compelling and real purpose that can nurture and enlighten it all — nurture and enlighten the things big and complex that evolve over many seasons, and, nurture and enlighten the things small and plain that happen daily like the green growing. I’m glad to be one helping to create organizational narratives that invite people in organizations to recognize what compels.
Well, Hafiz, the 13th century Persian Poet has another way of saying all of that, and it makes me smile. What a thing to invite people to the dance of life, occurring in so many communities and teams.
For inspiration.
I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My Heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the Sacred dance of life.
I was created to smile.
To Love.
To be lifted up.
And to lift others up.
O’ Sacred One,
untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul
that we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.
“nurture and enlighten” …
and yes,
“I was created for Joy.”
The image that came to me reading further down in the poem from Hafiz was of being underwater, my legs and feet entangled in seaweed, me struggling to get free, and then suddenly released and rising to the surface of the water with that burst of relief and the great inhale of breath and the instant appreciation for being ALIVE. Maybe that image is a little bit scary as it begins. But that’s how I’ve felt about my life for many years, that I was drowning and struggling to be freed of what ensnared me. It was the coming together of many things and persistent attention on my part, but ultimately it was also my determination that I would not die that way … I would not die without knowing what it is to be alive.
Thx Saoirse. It is the journey, I feel, for most humans to seek and claim a kind of freedom. Sometimes it is joy-filled. Sometimes it is with terror. I’m glad for people like yourself, that dare to take such journeys, and that have capacity to hold space for others taking such journeys. A bow.
This Hafiz favourite as rendered by Ladinsky showed up for me this week, too. Not quite there, but I appreciate the light and joyful reminder of possibility always present.
Thx Katharine. Yes to remembering. And, I feel, finding a grace in all of it, life unfolding, teaching and inviting as it does. A bow.